The Samsons: Two Novels; (Modern Library) (7 page)

Now he knew why Emy had not written.

Still, how could one escape the past? It had dogged him before and he had fled it only because there were other consuming interests—America
and its neuroses and its preoccupation with order and new and gleaming things—and then there was Carmen, who by herself had meant all that was unattainable. Her very name created visions of the gracious life, the air-conditioning, the air-foam mattresses, the automatic refrigerators and Florsheim shoes—all that he was alien to, even now. Now all these things and the bountiful life were his for the picking. The past be damned then, for what really mattered was now. He asked himself to what infinite reaches had he staked his claims? From the depths of him he heard his own voice saying: Accept, accept! The words ticked in his head like the strikings of a pendulum, measured, persistent, confirming loudly the fact that he was still possessed of a conscience and a capacity to study himself, a capacity for humility, too, and with the humility, a readiness to search the wild, unending landscape of his vision for that single and vivid spark that would tell him he was a success. In all ways he was, and there was more coming. America had not been miserly after all with its benevolence, nor had it spoiled him. No, America had not defiled his perspective and his innocence.

How was it then? How had it been in the old boardinghouse on Maple Street, the four years he spent in it with his roommate, Bitfogel? Larry Bitfogel—and he rose quickly and started a letter. Larry, who majored in agricultural economics, was now in South America as a consultant with the International Cooperation Agency.

“My dear Larry,” he wrote in his slow, careful hand, “I am now back home and safely under the yoke at the university.

He closed the letter with that little nicety, then lay on his hard, old cot, deaf to the noises of the world and finally immune to the heat of the early May night. He was home; a very secure position at the university awaited him, and there was, as a bonus, Carmen Villa. So this was Antipolo—and this was not the end. It was the beginning, and before him the opportunities were limitless. He could no longer be bothered by nightmares, for a man sure of himself, sure of his achievements and of what the morrow would bring could not be shaken by such trifles as the omnipresent past, or social responsibility. Knowledge always brings comfort, and before he went to sleep, Tony Samson felt like the most comfortable man on earth.

W
hen Tony awoke the sunlight had already splashed the room, a dazzling white on the mosquito net and on the starched doily that adorned his reading table. It was not the sun that woke him, though; it was the freight train that thundered by and shook the wooden house as if it were a flimsy packing crate. The train was the final reminder that he was in Antipolo. Another train had passed in the night, but after its clangor had gone he drifted quickly back to sleep. He remembered the times he looked out of the window right into the coaches as the trains sang by. The pleasure of being home was intense, and could have been more so if he had returned not to Antipolo but to Rosales, whose images lingered longest in the years that he was away. But home was Antipolo now, and it would only be by the sheerest of accidents that he would ever return to Rosales.

Tony stood up. Beyond the iron grill of the window lay the city—a jumble of wooden houses and rooftops, of rusty tin and gleaming aluminum. No breeze stirred on this muggy morning, but nevertheless the warm odor of dried fish frying in the kitchen below wafted up to him. And he heard his sister shushing her boys because their uncle was still asleep.

Listening to these domestic sounds, Tony felt at peace. He looked around him at his luggage, at the bookcase with its paint peeled off, at the lightbulb that hung above him, and, finally, at the bent, rusty nail that stuck out from the post at the other end of the room. The nail that had held an Igorot blanket a long time ago—the thought came languidly. I must not think of Emy now, he told himself, it’s enough that I’m back in this room and it is not as forlorn or as empty as I expected it to be.

After breakfast he went to the corner drugstore to make a call. The number Carmen had given him rang at once and he was pleased to hear her voice, vibrant and clear, at the other end of the line. A tingling sensation raced through him at the sound of her laughter. Yes, she missed him terribly and she wasn’t able to sleep at all. Yes, what a horrible night it had been, even with the air-conditioning.
Oye
, she was thinking of him always and the night reminded her of Washington, too, and that August when it was practically suffocating and, remember (another happy gurgling sound), they both went to sleep with nothing on (a peal of laughter). But that wasn’t important really; it was her missing him, his nearness, that mattered. And he tried to tell her, you shouldn’t be saying these things over the phone, darling. Isn’t anyone within earshot? And remember, all Manila phones are party lines.

But she wouldn’t stop teasing him. Then: Damnit, her anger came over the line like a jolt. Damnit, so what if the whole world is listening in. Tony, darn you, I miss you very much, your arms, your lips, the way you kissed me. I miss you and you should be glad to hear that.…

In the bus, on his way to the university, Tony beheld the completeness with which the dry season made its conquest. It had licked each blade of grass until the greenness was wiped clean from the landscape and what was once living patches as he remembered them had become huge brown scars. The season seemed to have infected the air, and from this infection it had moved on, crept into the pores and under the cranium until it lodged itself in the folds of the mind.

It was on a season like this that he had met Carmen, and deftly he brought to mind that August in Washington when he lived in a dingy room on Massachusetts Avenue near the Philippine embassy.
No breeze could drift even accidentally to his room, even after he had moved his bed next to the window that opened onto the street lined with elms. He had gone that morning to the embassy to talk with the cultural officer—an old acquaintance—about some of his research problems, and he had chanced upon her asking for the latest Manila papers because she did not know what was happening to her friends and she had not read a Filipino paper in days.

Yes, she was studying in the area, public relations and interior decoration, and tomorrow (she had gotten the paper she was looking for and she was headed for the door) she said she hoped she would see him again at the ambassador’s cocktail party. He was leaving, too, and was walking out with her, and he had said, “I really want to see you again, but tomorrow, I don’t think I’ll be there.…” It could have ended on the spot and he would not have known anything more about her, but he saw her again, because in Washington, Filipino students often saw one another. He had no time for parties—he did not have the money—because he was busy finishing his doctoral thesis on the
ilustrados
^*
and the Philippine Revolution; yes, he would like to show her the town if she would care to have him for company. And one afternoon she even went to his boardinghouse, because he knew people at the International Center and she wanted to visit the place, and some day the Library of Congress, too—if he would take her there. It had seemed as if love could not sprout from such a prosaic beginning, and thinking now of all this, Tony Samson wished that his conquest had encountered more difficulties and was not as easy as it turned out to be.

He was glad to find Dean Lopez in. His office was still on the ground floor of the main building and its frosted-glass windows were open to a faint breeze. The ceiling fans were unchanged and squeaky. When he was a graduate assistant he used to work in this office, and he remembered, with a sense of lightness, bringing the dean his lunch in an aluminum
fiambrera
†
when the dean worked overtime. He ate his lunch here, too, after all the doors were closed
and he was alone. His lunch often consisted of nothing but three pieces of
pan de sal
^‡
with Spanish sardines or a slice of native cheese, and these he downed with a bottle of Coke that he got from the vending machine down the hall. After lunch he often stole a nap on the bench reserved for visitors until the one o’clock bell jarred him back to his chores.

The old man seemed genuinely pleased to see him. “Tony, you don’t look like an Ilocano anymore!” The dean leaned back in his swivel chair and looked at him. “Your complexion has become fairer. And you have been overfed—look at your waistline!”

The old man’s tone, his fraternal remarks, touched Tony. He had finally established rapport with the dean.

“I brought something for you, sir,” he said. “I bought it in Frankfurt over a year ago on my way back to Boston and kept it so that I could give it to you personally.”

It was a meerschaum pipe. Dean Lopez, stout and past sixty, stood up and held it in the light, his eyes crinkling. “It must have cost you a fortune.… How much did you pay for it?”

Tony felt uneasy; he had saved the money scrimping on meals in Madrid and taking buses instead of planes on his return from Madrid to Hamburg, where he took a freighter back to Boston. “It isn’t really expensive, sir. But I knew you smoked pipes, so I thought I’d get you one.”

“Come on, I want to know how much,” the dean sounded stern.

“Well, it was only eight dollars, sir.…”

“Eight dollars, ha! Listen, Tony,” he took him by the arm. “I’m grateful for this. But don’t mention it to anyone, ha? I’ll go around showing it to other pipe-smokers and I’ll say it cost me a hundred and fifty pesos. That’s how much it costs at the Escolta. Here’s one Ilocano smoking a meerschaum pipe. We’ll play a joke on everyone, ha?”

Tony smiled. “Yes, sir, we will play a joke on everyone.”

Tony wanted to leave, but Lopez kept him. He was again talking to himself and Tony listened to the old, familiar tune. “Everything in this school is going to the dogs. I’ll never get to be university president as long as the politicians interfere. They are even trying to appoint
protégés as professors. But not in my college; I’ll not permit that sort of thing. So be at my side, Tony, and you will go places. We will teach these interlopers what we Ilocanos can do. Remember that.”

Tony smiled politely. In a while the other professors started filtering in—Dr. Santos, who taught Oriental history; Dr. Gomez, who taught government—and after more amenities, they started talking spiritedly about what Dean Lopez had started. The summer session was almost over. A new board of regents would soon take over the university administration and new promotions were being contemplated. Sometimes, almost in condescension, they directed a word or two in his direction. The full professors, his seniors by twenty years, had about them an aura of intellectual impregnability.